Ring Looks Rosy But Disappoints

A video game based on Richard Wagner's Ring cycle? Why not? It has everything a good game should have: epic struggles, creepy locales and a soundtrack that's second to none.

Ring for the PC is an adventure with lofty ambitions. It primarily seeks to keep intact the power and grandeur of Wagner's operatic epic. But remember, this is a video game - a medium not exactly renowned for its grandeur.

From the first animated sequence, Ring makes clear that it intends to be more than just another half-baked graphical adventure. Its imagery is stunning, and the musical accompaniment is sampled from Wagner's work.

Like the Ring cycle, the Ring video game moves between past and present in a search for lost worlds. But the present in Ring's case is many centuries in the future, long after Earth has wiped itself out. Players assume the role of ISH, who in turn transports himself back to take over the identities of characters from Alberich and Sigmund to Brunhilde and Loge.

The worlds inhabited by these characters are stunning. Sprawling over four discs, Ring creates environments that are at once fantastic and frightening. Combined with Wagner's music, the effect is eerily beautiful.

But play rarely lives up to the visuals. Using an interface and movement system similar to that in The Journeyman Project 3, Ring sometimes seems more like an interactive movie than a video game. Long stretches of dialogue unfold between relatively short sets of solving puzzles and collecting magic items.

The result: Empty beauty.

Too bad.

Ring requires a Pentium 133 with at least 32mb of RAM and 290mb of available hard-drive space.

THE CURSE OF `CURSE YOU!'

There is a simple, if unspoken premise behind Curse You! Red Baron: Have so much fun in the skies over Europe that you buy the full version of Red Baron 3D at twice the price. Curse You! is a combat flight simulator for players put off by all the technical details of combat flight sims.

It's easier to get the hang of, and it's a lot cheaper. The missions start right up, and it's possible to have a lot of fun without really knowing what's going on.

But behind the relatively simple missions and game modes lies the slick goal of Curse You! In the end, players are taught not to fear technical flight sims. In fact, they learn to crave them. Because though the play modes of Curse You! offer great mindless fun, they feel like candy after a while: yummy at first but unsatisfying in the end.

Curse You! Red Baron requires a Pentium 166 with at least 32mb of RAM and 140mb of hard-drive space. The developer recommends playing on a Pentium 233 or better with 48mb of RAM, 300mb of available hard-drive space and a Glide-compatible graphics card.